First, forget fellatio. The word, that is, forget the word fellatio. I never liked it. Sounds yuck. Not to mention a fancy “mouthful” (teehee) of a word — clinical, not sexy. From the Latin, it means I would be called a fellatrix, a woman who practices fellatio.

From Middle English, the word “suck” sounds simpler, stronger, more fun. And it rhymes with “fuck.”

But enough of these linguistic abstractions. It’s the story — with lots of juicy details — that’s important. The story of what happened earlier today that made me start this little essay…this feuilleton on fellatio.

Outside is cold, cold, as my gray-leggings-and-red-bra-clad body snuggles in a huge white, fluffy down comforter. I cradle my laptop, its screen flickering from the fireplace in front of the snuggly sofa where I’m ensconced. Also contributing to the cozy atmospherics: an afterglow of the sweet scent of semen. It’s what remains of what just happened. That — and a memory I’ll now try to put into words while my boyfriend is taking a hot shower, getting dressed, then going out to a business meeting that has nothing to do with me.

Just a few minutes ago we were snuggling together, too— and giggling, burrowed beneath the comforter. You can call it hygge, that Scandinavian word of the moment connoting “cozy and safe.” It’s a mood, a psychological state. Whatever it’s called, my head felt instinctively drawn to the warmth of his penis, whose stiffening my leggings and his corduroys failed to disguise.

Without thinking, I bent down and unzipped him. It seemed so natural. Indeed, the moment — nature itself! — required it. So, so different from other times I had given head; then it was as if the guys themselves had required it. To suck cock, to give a blow job: it was performance art, about which I imagined myself being graded (“Make me cum, baby!”). Sometimes they would grab my hair, force themselves deep down my throat, and make me gag.

But now he didn’t have to ask me. I surprised him. It was something I felt a spontaneous and overwhelming urge to do.

When I first slipped him into my mouth, he was certainly stiff but not yet rock-hard. With my lips tight against his shaft, I didn’t move. I just luxuriated in the foreign yet strangely pleasant sensations of feeling him quickly expand against my tongue and throat. Only then did I begin to move my head, ever so slowly, in gentle, circular motions so that my lips glided around the penis nestled in my mouth.

I’ve done a lot of yoga, but all those meditative movements and breathing have never brought me to such a state of perfect quietude and liberation. “Non-self emptiness and highest happiness,” I’ve heard it called.

Time itself seemed to stop. During sexual intercourse, on the other hand, I’m always aware — at least dimly so — of progression toward a climax…and becoming frustrated if that endpoint isn’t reached. You remain a captive of linear time, and its corollary of hurtful and harmful history.

But now was like a stillpoint. Nothing existed — not even the horror of Trump as President — beyond the sensation of my boyfriend’s cock snuggly in my mouth. Being a baby again with a pacifier is an obvious analogy perhaps. All I know and can now report is that I wasn’t conscious of anything except the pure pleasure of security and contentment.

Is this what is meant by tantric sex? The purpose of which extends beyond procreation as a means to spiritual fulfillment — breaking down and making obsolete all physical boundaries and societal taboos. Swallowing his penis, I am become him. And he, me. And something I never thought I’d dare say:

I find myself wishing I could wear forever the pearl necklace he gave me.